Making learnings your currency
When I started working I was this kid, who just wanted to learn more no matter what. Even if that would mean earning far less than what the market was paying, I was really convinced that in the end it would pay off somehow. That’s what I did! I was constantly optimizing for challenges that could level me up, almost careless about salary and stability. There were of course, times where I questioned myself about, well… this might not the best approach, am I just being naive and overly positive ?
Last year I left Uniplaces, four very fulfilling years (you can read part of the story here) to help KI group in it’s growth path (you can also read it here) and I took the time to do a retrospective…
Is this approach really paying off ?
My impression is that my gut feeling was right. I’m 28 years old and I feel quite fulfilled. The experiences I’ve been through really define the professional I am today and I’m constantly leveraging from the learnings I collect. In this article I want to shortly share how I’ve been doing it
1. There’s no such thing of just learning one thing
I have a technical background and I consider myself a tech person. I was really focused in learning about my field, and it’s easy to close your mind to just one thing. But soon I realised, to be better in what I do, learning other fields is a must. Don’t limit yourself to your field, you’ll be a better engineer if you understand operations, finance, marketing… you name it. Same applies to other fields. Are you in People Operations ? I bet you’ll benefit somehow from understanding how an engineering team works. Nothing works in complete isolation, if you’re able to join the dots in your business you’ll be in a much better place.
2. Stay on track
Depending on your situation, once you start doing 1., one common mistake is to start worrying too much and doing efforts in fields that are not your responsibility. Proactiveness is always good, but keep in mind that you’re not a super hero and your time is not unlimited. Use your time wisely, learn other fields to make you better in your responsibilities first.
3. Surround yourself with people better than you
Always make sure, you’re close to people better than you in something. This will obviously increase the chances, that you’ll be learning more. If you’re in a position where you have a say on hiring, make sure that the candidate is better than you in something! I’ve been following this rule ever since I’m involved in hiring, specially now at KI where every single person in my team, is better than me in something and I can really see more and more the outcomes of it.
4. Find your mentors and listen
If you have the chance to have someone actively mentoring you, shut up and listen. Even if you strongly disagree, just accept you might be wrong. Give them the chance to prove you wrong. I had countless episodes like these ones with Eduardo Oliveira where later I realised “shit, he was right”. I just need to thank him for the impact he had in the path I’ve taken.
One thing I started doing was to identify and observe closely, who I call passive mentors. Are you in a meeting in a cross functional group, in a negotiation, in an interview, in a performance review or just having beers ? Every situation is worth looking with attention, you start finding patterns in people that lead to either good or bad outcomes. After a while, you’ll realise how much you can learn with someone even if you’re not working directly with this person. I had the chance to improve a lot my soft skills and negotiation skills not by reading books, but by observing with the right mindset how others were doing their stuff. These people usually don’t even imagine how much you’re taking from them. I took a lot from Miguel Santo Amaro in my startup building experience and now taking so much from the people I’m fortunate to work with in KI Group.
5. Learning is not just collecting data, is changing behaviour
If you’re reading, seeing a video or going through an experience and in the end, that doesn’t change your behaviour, you’re not learning.
Following the above allows me to increase the real value I take from the work I’ve been doing. When ending a cycle and moving on to your next thing, ask yourself how much did you earn in your job? Don’t look at your salary throughout the years, look at how much you’ve learned and how much you can leverage it in the future. I’m now applying the same principle in my companies, learnings > revenue whenever we can afford it :)
